


Paradox & Specificity

by Jester85



Category: (500) Days of Summer (2009), Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur and Eames are morally ambiguous, Backstory, Crossover, M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-03-19 10:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3606435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jester85/pseuds/Jester85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once there was an architect named Tom Hansen.  Now there is a Point Man named Arthur Levine.  And a Forger called Eames.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, yea. I've written fanfiction before, but this is my first Arthur/Eames fic. I just randomly cranked this out last night on a whim because I've had writer's block with another story (not fanfiction) and thought taking a break and writing something else might help.
> 
> I don't know how good it is, so take it or leave it. I do have more if anyone likes. No real plot yet to speak of, just an Arthurian inner monologue. I may have overdone the "Arthur is emotionally repressed" cliche, and haven't necessarily written he or Eames as the nicest or most moral individuals (because, well, objectively they're kind of...not). Idk. 
> 
> In this universe, Arthur used to be Tom Hansen from 500 Days of Summer.

**_Arthur_ **

Contrary to Eames' suspicions, Arthur has never served in the military.

 

He's never bothered to correct the forger; what the Englishman doesn't know won't hurt him, and if Eames is so determined to pursue a wrong path regarding Arthur's background, far be it for him to discourage it.  Sometimes Arthur even sprinkles his life with nuggets designed to fan Eames' beliefs.  A way of carrying himself, purposeful and stiff-backed, he gets from watching soldiers and Guardsmen at attention, though slouching and poor posture has always been distasteful and unattractive to him anyway.  Sprinkling his speech with the odd bit of ambiguously ex-military lingo.  Using military time.  Seeing the lights flicker in Eames' eyes as he picks up on the clues is almost enough to make a hint of a smile quirk at the corner of the younger American's thin mouth.

 

 

Eames might be the Forger, and Arthur the Point Man, but that doesn't mean, contrary to what Eames seems to think, that he's the only one capable of picking up bits and pieces of other people and adding them to himself. 

 

Or that Eames is the only one blessed with the power of reading people.

 

Arthur has spent a long time studying the bulky Englishman behind a well-honed exterior of finding his very existence distasteful and of no possible interest whatsoever.  He catches the little twitch, not quite a smile and not quite a grimace but somewhere in between, maybe both at once, when Eames mentions Fischer's relationship with his father, and ponders what it means about Eames' own.  He knows the baggy, ill-fitting (and offensively garish) clothes Eames drapes himself in, as if every cheap touristy clothing shop in Europe threw up on him, make him look far more chunky and out-of-shape than he actually is.  A job in a particularly sweltering South American country which shall remain nameless, for people who shall remain equally nameless, thank you very much, finally moved the Englishman to casually shuck his oversized jacket and painfully pink undershirt aside, and Arthur had quirked one newly-appraising eyebrow at the surprisingly muscular body underneath.  He'd assumed Eames was slovenly, a little chubby, out-of-shape.  A man who enjoyed life, probably overindulged at times—there was a ruddiness to his cheeks that suggested that—but there was nothing out-of-shape about the body underneath.  A few extra pounds, sure, thick around the middle, but covering muscles hard and powerful, broad across the chest and shoulders, with a back like a damned water buffalo.  Arthur had watched Eames lazily stretch like a sun-bathing cat, supple and feline and somehow graceful despite his bulk, and watched the muscles ripple in his broad expanse of back, making the tattoos covering every inch of his upper body contract and expand, and his mouth had suddenly felt dry in a way that had nothing to do with the South American heat that made him feel as if he'd bathed in his own sweat.

 

Arthur knows other things about Eames too.  He knows the practiced look of boredom and inattention the man puts on is a carefully constructed facade, that the sleepy half-lidded eyes that seem to be utterly bored with everything around him actually miss nothing, that the slouching layabout who drapes himself absurdly to fill entire doorways, or sprawls ridiculously in chairs that can barely contain him, who rocks back and fiddles with a toothpick and stretches and yawns and cracks his knuckles and stares blankly out windows while the rest of the team leans on the edge of their seats, sharp and crisp in pressed suits and expressions of intense concentration, can spring into action in the blink of an eye and be as quick and as lethal as any of them.  He's seen Eames, his blue gaze sharp and intense, gun blazing and taking down one trained projection after another without missing a shot, his entire body transformed from practiced apathy into something lean and mean and almost predatory.

 

Contrary to his outer scorn at the other man's very existence, Arthur knows Eames is the best of the best at what he does.  He knows Eames feigning ignorance of long words like "specificity" or needing to be walked through basic math, is all part of the package he wraps himself in to appear a classless boor.

 

Arthur acts like Eames repulses him, and really, he should.  Everything about him is distasteful to Arthur.  The sloppy way he dresses in uncoordinated and ill-fitting clothes, the polar opposite of Arthur's sharp, crisp suits.  His slouching posture, equally opposite.  The exaggeratedly unrefined accent he puts on, under which Arthur can hear a hint of posh peeking through, which makes the younger man frown in confusion at why Eames strives with every part of himself to appear less than he is.  His greasy comb-over and the way he always looks like he hasn't shaved in a week.  He eats takeout noisily and greedily, his fingers covered in grease, and then licks them off during meetings, filling the warehouse with obnoxiously loud self-satisfied slurps that make Arthur cringe in vicarious embarrassment. 

 

Basically, he should be completely repulsive, and a lot of the time, he is.

 

But there are moments when Arthur catches those intent blue eyes, turned sharp and predatory, fixed on his profile during a meeting, and he feels a heat wash over his face about being in that blatantly hungry gaze.  He can almost see the wheels turning in Eames' mind, imagine the things the other man is imagining doing to him.  There are moments when he imagines tracing his fingers or his tongue over the sprawling expanse of tattoos, learning about each one, or kissing Eames' incongruously feminine mouth and finding out if those plump, sensuous lips are as soft as they look.  He wants to hear his name growled past Eames' mouth in that husky purr. 

 

But he also wants to secretly sign Eames up for one of those before and after makeover shows and teach him to invest in a tailor and a razor most of the time, which is a reassuring thought.

 

Arthur is not in love with Eames.  That is not denial or self-delusion.  It's a calm, objective fact, and he is enough of a big boy to know if it wasn't.  His youthful romantic tanglings cured him of his ridiculous schoolboy fantasies about love.  He admits within the private recesses of his own mind, if nowhere else, that he finds Eames intriguing, and that the man manages to even be kind of sexy in spite of himself, but they are idle thoughts.  Arthur doesn't fuck co-workers.  At least, not anymore.

 

Arthur in his own best judgment doesn't have unrealistic appraisals of himself, but he's fairly certain he could fuck—or as he suspects, get fucked—by Eames if he wanted to, just as he's fairly certain he could take Ariadne to bed if he wanted to.  He doesn't need to be a Forger to notice the little blush on the petite architect student's cheeks when he compliments one of her designs or flashes her a smile of approval.  The kiss during the Fischer inception gives him a twinge of guilt, but at the time it was a survival strategy.  Her lips weren't displeasing, but he has to set a moral line somewhere.  Seducing an impressionable student who plainly admires him doesn't sit right with Arthur, though he doesn't know why, when invading people's minds to steal their secrets is his bread and butter.  Mostly, he chalks it up to seeing some of himself in Ariadne, remembering the young, eager architect student in another place with another name donning a crisp, sharp suit and a slicked-back hairstyle, essentially becoming Arthur before he was Arthur, and stepping into that job interview with Dominic Cobb.

 

That faint flicker of a half-smile ghosts across Arthur's lips, but no one is around to see it.  He wonders if Eames would be disappointed to learn how much more mundane Arthur's past really is.  He imagines Eames seeing Tom Hansen writing his silly greeting cards and following Summer around like a lovesick puppy dog, and imagines the Englishman either losing all attraction to him, or laughing uproariously.  Maybe both.  Arthur is alright with never finding out which.

"Are you...quite alright, darling?"

 

The soft purr of Eames' voice pulls Arthur's eyes up from the notes spread out in front of him, piled alongside a catalogue of Mathieu Blanc's financial expenditures.  Lax research dumped them in the middle of a shooting gallery during the inception job, and Arthur is not about to let that happen again.

 

Arthur swivels in his chair to find Eames sauntering lazily toward him in that insolent way he has.  The man's bow legs and gangster swagger combine to make him always look like he's making room for the world's biggest pair of balls—or _bollocks,_ Arthur supposes.  His head is tilted to the side, lips smirking and eyeing Arthur like he knows some delicious little secret, as if he can see right into Arthur's head.

 

Arthur observes the man's wide stance and idly imagines Eames swaggering right up to his chair and straddling his hips.

            "I'm fine, Mr. Eames."

 

            His eyes flick down to the McDonald's wrapper crumpled in Eames' hands, the white paper turned translucent where grease has soaked through, and his mouth turns down slightly.

            "Something I can help you with?"

 

            His tone is as flat as he can make it, trying to ward off any of Eames' sexual innuendos, but it never stops the other man anyway.

 

            "Depends on what you're offering," Eames quips, wagging his eyebrows.

 

            "I'm _offering_ to let you keep practicing your forge, Eames," Arthur returns, his voice growing frosty.  "We can't afford any slip-ups."

 

            "Arthur, you wound me," Eames cries, clapping his free hand to his shirt in mock hurt.  "When have you ever known me to be less than utterly brilliant?"

 

            Arthur rolls his eyes and swivels back around to face his notes.  "There's a first time for everything."

 

            "So you've proved."

 

            Arthur grits his teeth but says nothing.

 

            Eames slides onto the table, settling his bulk next to Arthur's papers but at least showing enough sense to not disturb the carefully organized chaos Arthur has created.

            "All work and no play makes Arthur a dull boy."

 

            "And all play and no work makes Arthur a vegetable while his mind plays Lego City in Limbo for the next couple thousand years," the American bites out.

 

            Eames looks bizarrely delighted, as if Arthur just said something terribly witty.  Arthur notices Eames' crooked uneven teeth and frowns to himself at the thought that it's not as unattractive as it should be. 

            When Arthur doesn't return his grin, Eames's face turns serious, or as serious as Eames ever looks when he's not trapped in the back of a cab with machine gunfire coming through the rear window ( _and Arthur absolutely was not terrified for Eames during that clusterfuck, thank you VERY much)._

 

"You do realize that humans devise these ingenious things called happy mediums, yes, darling?"

 

"There's no happy medium in dreamshare.  You're either all the way in or all the way out," Arthur tosses out, scanning over the paperwork and wishing Eames would leave him alone without his inane one-liners or his warm breath on the back of Arthur's neck.

 

“Between you and me, pet,” Eames purrs, his voice dropping an octave for them alone, even though there's no one else in the warehouse, “I don't object to being _all the way in_.”

 

“Then spend more time practicing your forge and less your terrible pick-up lines,” Arthur growls, blushing furiously and resolutely not looking at Eames.

“Actually, scratch that.  If this is your usual seduction strategy, I think it needs more work.”

 

“Oh, love, I perfected my forge days ago.  Mathieu Blanc's dearly departed old _grand-m_ _ère_ will be reporting for duty, as promised.  Relax, Arthur.  You work too hard, you know.“

 

“I'll celebrate when I see she's up to the challenge.”

 

“If it would set your mind at ease, you could let me show you the far more interesting ways in which I am _up_ to the challenge...”

 

“That's very generous of you.”

 

“A joy shared is a joy doubled.”

 

“I'll take your word for it, Mr. Eames.”

 

 

When Eames' big hand lays gently on his shoulder, Arthur curses himself at the way his entire body involuntarily tenses, and then, very close to his ear, Eames whispers, " _You musn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling_."

 

And then he's gone, sauntering back the way he came and actually goddamned _whistling_ as he goes, and Arthur attacks his research with a fury that hadn't been there a minute before.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur needs to get laid. And not by Eames.

Arthur needs to get laid.

While he has only scorn for those people who lose all self-control when it comes to sex—so many marks, and some clients too—Arthur Levine is in fact a flesh-and-blood human being, not the android some of his colleagues take him for, and a young man with hormones, and sometimes he needs to get it out of his system.

Sometimes he still pulls girls, but his latest bedmate is a man, a rail-thin blond twink about as different from Eames as possible, not that that’s relevant. Arthur prepares the boy as he squirms in anticipation, efficient and businesslike, not gentle, just thorough. Arthur tops and is maybe even a little rough, fucking the stress of a job out of his body into the one under him, thrusting in a steady, driving rhythm with the guy’s ankles flung up onto his shoulders. Arthur grunts when he comes but he doesn’t close his eyes. His hair stays in place the whole time.

After, he indulges himself with a slow drag on a cigarette—completing a job or completing a fuck being the only occasions he permits it—and irritably shrugs off the twink’s attempts to cuddle. If he was in the mood for post-coital clinging, he’d have brought home a girl.

The tendrils of smoke curl toward the ceiling of the Paris hotel room, and Arthur remembers Inception. He wonders if this is how all overambitious professionals feel when they realize they’re barely over thirty and their crowning achievement is already receding into the distance behind them.

After the door closes with a soft click and a post-it-note next to the used bottle of lube and crumpled tissues on the nightstand, a number hastily scribbled that he has no intention of using, Arthur smells the boy's arousal on his fingers and gets up for a shower. Quick but thorough, efficient, as vaguely mechanical as the fucking had been. Somewhere behind his carefully bland expression, there’s vague memories of giddy awkward fumbling in the shower, Tom Hansen and Summer Finn trying to find leverage, trying to figure out the mechanics of shower sex, ending up bringing themselves crashing down and taking the shower curtain with them, but not stopping anyway, had finished with a lot of frantic thrashing around in the ruins of a collapsed shower curtain with a lot of giggling and flailing limbs.

But Tom Hansen was a stupid kid.

Arthur Levine wipes his palm across the mirror and observes the reflection staring back at him. He’s in his early thirties now, though he could easily still pass for his twenties and some of his birth certificates still place him in that range. His ears still stick boyishly out, defying the attempts of his sharp suits and slickered hair to make him look like a grown-up. Arthur is self-aware enough to know a psychiatrist would have a field day with his overcompensating. Fresh out of the shower, his hair is already shoved back with his hands, wet and sticking to his scalp, though curling in the back. His mouth is a thin line curved in a slight frown. His eyes have the same look of detachment that always greets him in the mirror. 

He’s not horny at the moment, though he feels vaguely unsatisfied. The sex was mediocre, and felt as mechanical a physical activity as his morning treadmill runs while listening to his audio cassette of notes. Sometimes in French, to keep from getting rusty, and sometimes walking himself through Hebrew, which he's studiously learning because it feels to him like something Arthur Levine would do. Tom Hansen wasn't Jewish, but Arthur Levine is. If you really want, he can show you his Bar Mitzvah certificate. 

Vaguely, Arthur wonders what sex with Eames would be like. He suspects Eames would want to fuck him. It’s not that Arthur’s never bottomed before, but it’s not something he’s done any time recently. Relinquishing control, giving yourself to another person like that...it doesn’t sit right with him, and the thought of letting Eames in, literally and figuratively, letting down his defenses and submitting to the Forger...that strikes Arthur as downright dangerous.

Still, there is something tantalizing about the thought, in the way a taboo notion has that extra kick. Eames' twinkling eyes and the lascivious smack of his lips practically promises dirty, slightly kinky sex. Arthur wants to know if that mouth is as good at certain things as it looks.

He sighs and begins his nighttime rituals. He could too easily imagine himself getting caught up in the throes of passion with Eames, and that’s exactly why it can’t happen.

He sprawls across bedsheets of fine French linen covered in a cascade of notes and paperwork until after midnight, and his thoughts only flicker to a ripple of muscle and a crawl of tattoos once or twice.

Definitely no more than thrice. 

* * *

The next day, when Eames' clomping footsteps ring out obnoxiously loudly in the empty warehouse, Arthur is feeling relaxed enough to swivel around and greet the Forger with a faint friendly smile.

Eames pauses a step, as if made wary by Arthur’s inviting demeanor. “Get up on the right side of the bed this morning, love?”

Arthur muses how much to share with Eames. “You could say that,” he offers finally, a smirk playing at his lips and eyebrows raised, suddenly looking less like a robotic stuffed shirt and more like a young guy who got laid last night.

Eames’ eyes are veiled and hooded then, their expression going opaque in a way that makes Arthur’s good humor—relatively speaking—die in his throat a little.  
“Decide to dream a little bigger, did we?”

The Englishman almost bites the words out. Arthur cocks his head, a flicker of irritation rising in his chest. He and Eames are nothing to each other but co-workers, and sporadic ones at that. The Forger has no right to get bitchy about his personal relations.

“I…couldn’t really tell you,” he ends up shrugging awkwardly as he realized he barely remembered what the guy looked like, let alone how big his dick was.

Eames raises his eyebrows exaggeratedly, his sensuous lips forming an O, and Arthur is fleetingly distracted by the vision of Eames on his knees, Arthur slowly sliding his cock between those thick, wet lips…

“Arthur, darling, I am scandalized.”

“I doubt that very much,” Arthur returns dryly, turning back to his paperwork.

But then Eames is sidling up behind him, hot breath washing over the back of Arthur’s neck and making the hairs stand on end.  
“You should try someone who knows how to make a bigger impression,” the Forger purrs seductively in his ear.

Arthur half-turned, blushing furiously and pissed off, and sees only Eames’ broad back sauntering away in his ridiculous bowlegged shuffle. And he realizes that he is hard, his cock straining against his pants with an almost painful insistence he had never felt even last night when he knew he was going to get laid.

Arthur glares down at his treacherous dick, then at the now empty doorway. Damn Eames.

He just needs to get laid more often.


	3. Afternoon Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mission in Casablanca hits a snag.
> 
> Modeled after a scene in the movie Allied, but with Arthur & Eames.

 

"I think the man at the bar knows me," Arthur says, easily as anything, not lowering the Italian aviator sunglasses hiding the eyes Eames enjoys so much.

Not that doing so would make the point man's gaze any less opaque.  As much as Eames could lose himself in Arthur's chocolate browns, they are as opaque and inscrutable as the blank black shields greeting him.

Eames doesn't so much as flick his gaze, doesn't budge his bulk, clad in a hideous paisley shirt he'd been delighted to see drew a visible flinch from Arthur when the younger, slimmer man first laid eyes on him, from its lazy indolent sprawl.  He'd spotted the man twenty minutes ago.

Not that he'd pay Arthur the disrespect of saying so.

"Well our friend is somewhat less than chameleonic," the Englishman drawls, drawing out the last word like he's sounding it out syllable by syllable, like he just learned it on one of those Word of the Day daily desk calendars, because he knows Arthur probably suspects as much and he likes feeding Arthur's wrong assumptions,   
"A white man in Morocco stands out like a black man in Martha’s Vineyard, but more to the point, Arthur Dear,  _where_  do you know him  _from_?"

There’s an edge that seeps into the tail end of his question that sounds a bit like jealousy, enough to make the Forger wince inwardly.  Even with a trusted colleague---and, he realizes, he does trust Arthur in a queer fashion, no pun intended for once---in a business as shady as theirs, it doesn’t pay to let anyone know they’ve got leverage on you.

Certainly not something as messy, unprofessional, and altogether inconvenient as _feelings._

*** * ***

_“It’s not as taboo as you’re tryin’ to make it out, love,” the Englishman drawls, accent thicker and diction looser with too much drunk and perhaps too much_ want _in another time and another place, undershirt half-undone, enough for the Point Man to see a broad chest adorned with hair and the edges of swirly ink, the intriguing promise of more to be discovered, “We both know co-workers who’ve fucked each other.”_

_Arthur’s tone came out sharper and colder for the knowledge, come too late, that he’d let himself look a fraction too long.  “They fucked, Eames.  Then they fucked the job.  Then they got fucked.”_

_Eames grinned enough for Arthur to see the snaggle tooth that shouldn’t have been an intriguing imperfection.  “That’s a lot of fucking, darling.”_

_If Eames was a little less drunk or a little less brazen, the Point Man’s glare could have shot him dead at ten paces._

_“Button your shirt, Mr. Eames.”_

*** * ***

"But more to the point, Arthur Dear,  _where_  do you know him  _from_?"

“Not where you’re thinking,” Arthur snapped curtly even as he felt the tips of his ears heating, because why did he sound so defensive, and why did he feel the need to justify himself to this British thug?

_Because you let him get under your skin.  Because part of you_ likes _him there._

What he said was the truth, anyway.  Eames, damn observant Eames, was one of the few among their colleagues who knew he wasn’t the asexual android he came off as, knew he pulled both men and women, but never during a job, only after, a release of pent-up tension he allowed himself like the cigarette after---even his R&R was ritualistic, and wouldn’t a psychiatrist have something to say about that---but he’d never bedded the man he was eying in the reflection of his wine glass, would probably be less likely to recognize him if he had.  He was a cold fuck, impersonal and untouchable even with his dick up their ass, he knew and accepted it about himself; when he fucked men he only fucked them face-to-face so they didn’t come on his bedsheets, if they came.  He had standards, after all.

“I…think he interrogated me once.  In Mombasa.”

The confession caught in his throat, made his carefully neutral voice halt and catch, and _damn it_ he wouldn’t even pay Eames the disrespect of hoping he hadn’t noticed that.

Apparently laying for two days on a freezing cold floor and being kicked in the ribs and having electrodes clamped to your genitals did that to a guy.  Huh.

Eames’ gaze wasn’t pitying---the Forger knew him well enough to know that would probably get a Glock in his face---but it was somehow more serious, appraising, though outwardly nothing in the man’s expression had changed at all.

“How sure are you?”  The tone was carefully level, the words precise and measured.  Not pitying, but like trying not to spook an abused animal.

Arthur kept his gaze level on Eames’ while in his peripheral, a head of slicked-back auburn hair half-turned to reveal a receding widow’s peak and nose bent, as if it had been broken at some point.

Like the time he’d slammed his elbow into it.

“Eighty percent sure.”

“You’d best attend to it then, haven’t you,” Eames tossed out, nonchalantly as if making an idle comment on the weather.

The reflection floated, flowing and distorted, past his glass and up the stairs toward the restrooms.

Without bothering another glance at Eames, Arthur rose gracefully from his seat, long legs unfolding, and glided up the stairs, looking for all the world like a young wealthy American tourist headed for the loo.

“Hate to see you leave, love to watch you go,” Eames sing-songed.

Arthur didn’t turn around.

*** * ***

The corridor was dark and narrow, the restroom guarded by a flimsy wooden privacy partition.

The white man with the widow’s peak was speaking animatedly in French into the public payphone, too rapidly and urgently for Arthur to safely assume he was talking about anyone but the Point Man he’d just spotted at the café.

The blow slammed the man’s nose into the wall, breaking it again.  A flail of limbs, twin grunts of exertion, and Arthur had his hands around the man’s throat, thumb driving into his trachea.

Startled blue eyes, wide with recognition, met flat chocolate brown.  It may as well have been the dramatic movie moment where the villain gasped “You!”.

But the man wouldn’t be saying anything, now or ever again.

Arthur ignored the crunch, the feel of muscle and bone giving way to his pressing thumbs, watched the light drain from the blue eyes he remembered leering down at him in a cell in Algeria, and finally let the body slump to the floor.

He checked himself in the mirror.  His hair stayed in place the whole time. 

His hands were trembling slightly.  He frowned at the lack of self-control.  He’d mowed down dozens of projections in the dream world, but he’d only killed a handful of men in reality.

_He saw you.  He knew you.  You were with Eames.  You had to protect yourself.  You had to protect Eames._

He slid his hands into his pockets in a casual pose to mask their trembling, and strolled out the hall with a carefree spring in his step that came so naturally he didn’t need to consciously fake it anymore.

Deal with it later.  After The Job, after the getaway, after getting off the plane back in the States, just….after.

Or add it to the increasingly thick folder of Things Arthur Levine Does Not Deal With.

It doesn’t matter.

All that matters is that he is The Point Man.  And he is on point.

 


End file.
